CELLELAGER
The attention given to me by the prison-guards would have been
disconcerting to a less modest man than I am. A soldier sat with me
all the way on the train. I could not lose him! He stuck to me like
a shadow. When I stood up, he stood up. When I changed my seat, he
changed his. And he could understand English, too, so Bromley and I
could not get a word in. He seemed to me--though I suppose that was
simply imagination--to be looking at my rings, and I knew my pack's
string was rubbing them. I hardly knew what to do. At last I hastily
removed my pack, folded my overcoat so that the rings would not show,
and hung it up, but as the train lurched and rolled, I was fearful
of the effect this would have on the rings. I fancied I smelled dry
cocoa, and seemed to see light brown dust falling on the seat. Why
hadn't I thought to put sugar in it when I mixed it up?
When we reached the camp, which was called Cellelager, we found we
had come to one which was not in the same class as Giessen. The
sleeping-accommodations were insufficient for the crowd of men, and
there was one bunk above the other. There was one canteen for the
whole camp (instead of one in each hut as we had in Giessen), and
here we could buy cakes, needles, thread, and buttons, also apples.
The food was the same, except that we had soup in the morning instead
of coffee, and it was the worst soup we had yet encountered. As an
emetic, it was an honest, hard-working article which would bring
results, but it lacked all the qualifications of a good soup. I tried
it only once.
We were delighted to see no rings except what we had in our party.
The Commandant of the camp did not take any notice of them, so we
were able to remove all traces of them from our new overcoats, and
when Steve Le Blanc, from Ottawa, gave me a nice navy-blue civilian
coat, I gave my ringed tunic to one of the boys, who forthwith passed
himself off for a ring-man, to avoid being sent out to work.
I found, however, he only enjoyed a brief exemption, for his record,
all written down and sent along with him, showed his character had
been blameless and exemplary, and the rings on his coat could not
save him. It was "Raus in!" and "Raus out!" every day for him! In
this manner did his good deeds find him out.
There was a football ground at this camp, and a theatre for the
prisoners to use, but in the week we were there I saw only one game
of football.
At the end of a week we were moved again, most of us. They did not,
of course, tell us where we were going, but as they picked out all
of us who had ever tried to escape--and all those who had refused to
work--we were pretty sure it was not a "Reward of Merit" move.
We were awakened at a very early hour and were started off to the
station, loaded with stuff. We had blankets, wash-basin, empty
mattress, and wooden clogs. The boys did not take kindly to the
wooden clogs, and under cover of the darkness--for it was long before
daylight--they threw them away. The road to the station the next
morning must have looked as if a royal wedding party had gone by.
This time we were glad to be able to see where we were going,
although it was a dismal, barren country we travelled through,
with many patches of heather moor and marsh. The settlements were
scattered and the buildings poor. But even if we did not think much
of the country, we liked the direction, for it was northwest, and
was bringing us nearer Holland.
At Bremen, the second largest seaport in Germany, we stayed a couple
of hours, but were not let out of our car, so saw nothing of the
city.
At about four o'clock in the afternoon, we arrived in Oldenburg, and
began our eight-mile march to Vehnemoor Camp, which is one of the
Cellelager group and known as Cellelager VI. We were glad to dispose
of our packs by loading them on a canal-boat, which we pulled along
by ropes, and we arrived at the camp late in the evening.
This camp had but a few prisoners in it when we came, but there were
nearly four hundred of us, and we filled it to overflowing. There
were three tiers of bunks where the roof was high enough to admit
of it, and that first night we were there we slept on our empty
mattresses. However, we still had our Red Cross blanket and the two
German blankets apiece, and we managed to keep warm. There were two
rooms with two peat stoves in each room.
The camp was built beside a peat bog, on ground from which the peat
had been removed, and there was no paving of any kind around it. One
step from the door brought us to the raw mud, and the dirt inside the
camp was indescribable. There were no books or papers; the canteen
sold nothing but matches, notepaper, and something that tasted
remotely like buckwheat honey.
The first morning the Commandant addressed us, through an
interpreter. He told us he had heard about us. There was dead
silence at that; we were pretty sure we knew what he had heard. Then
he told us that some of us had refused to work and some had tried
to escape; he was grieved to hear these things! He hoped they would
not happen again. It was foolish to act this way, and would meet
with punishment (we knew that). If we would retain his friendship,
we must do as we were told. There was no other way to retain his
friendship. He repeated that. Some of us felt we could get along
without his friendship better than without some other things. We
noticed from the first that he didn't seem sure of himself.
Then came roll-call!
None of us like the thought of getting out to work in this horrible
climate, cold, dark, and rainy, and the roll-call brought out the
fact that we had very few able-bodied men. He had a list of our
names, and we were called in groups into an office. Bromley and I
gave our occupations as "farmers," for we hoped to be sent out to
work on a farm and thus have an opportunity of getting away.
Most of the Canadians were "trappers," though I imagine many of them
must have gained their experience from mouse-traps. Many of the
Englishmen were "boxers" and "acrobats." There were "musicians,"
"cornetists," and "trombone artists," "piano-tuners," "orchestra
leaders," "ventriloquists," "keepers in asylums," "corsetiers,"
"private secretaries," "masseurs," "agents," "clerks," "judges of
the Supreme Court," and a fine big fellow, a Canadian who looked as
if he might have been able to dig a little, gave his occupation as
a "lion-tamer."
The work which we were wanted to do was to turn over the sod on the
peat bogs. It looked as if they were just trying to keep us busy,
and every possible means was tried by us to avoid work.
The "lion-tamer" and three of his companions, fine, vigorous young
chaps, stayed in bed for about a week, claiming to be sick. They got
up for a while every afternoon--to rest. The doctor came three times
a week to look us over, but in the intervening days another man, not
a doctor, who was very good-natured, attended to us.
One day nine went on "sick parade"; that is, lined up before the
medical examiner and were all exempted from work. The next day there
were ninety of us numbered among the sick, and we had everything from
galloping consumption to ingrowing toe-nails, and were prepared to
give full particulars regarding the same. But they were not asked
for, for armed guards came in suddenly and we were marched out to
work at the point of the bayonet.
Steve Le Blanc, one of the party, who was a splendid actor, spent the
morning painfully digging his own grave. He did it so well, and with
such faltering movements and so many evidences of early decay, that
he almost deceived our own fellows. He looked so drawn and pale that
I was not sure but what he was really sick, until it was all over.
When he had the grave dug down to the distance of a couple of feet,
the guard stopped him and made him fill it in again, which he did,
and erected a wooden cross to his own memory, and delivered a
touching funeral oration eulogizing the departed.
We all got in early that day, but most of us decided we would not try
the "sick parade" again.
This was in the month of January, which is the rainy season, and
there was every excuse for the boys' not wanting to work--besides the
big reason for not wanting to help the Germans.
One night, when some of our fellows came in from work, cold, wet, and
tired, and were about to attack their supper of black bread and soup,
the mail came in, and one of the boys from Toronto got a letter from
a young lady there who had been out on the Kingston Road to see an
Internment Camp. He let me read the letter. She had gone out one
beautiful July day, she said, and found the men having their evening
meal under the beeches, and they did so enjoy their strawberries and
ice-cream; and they had such lovely gardens, she said, and enough
vegetables in them to provide for the winter. The conclusion of the
letter is where the real sting came: "I am so glad, dear Bert, that
you are safe in Germany out of the smoke and roar and dirt of the
trenches. It has made me feel so satisfied about you, to see these
prisoners. I was worrying a little about you before I saw them. But
now I won't worry a bit. I am glad to see prisoners can be so happy.
I will just hope you are as well cared for as they are.... Daddy and
Mother were simply wild about Germany when they were there two years
before the war. They say the German ways are so quaint and the
children have such pretty manners, and I am afraid you will be
awfully hard to please when you come back, for Daddy and Mother were
crazy about German cooking."
I handed the letter back, and Bert and I looked at each other. He
rolled his eyes around the crowded room, where five hundred men were
herded together. Two smoking stoves, burning their miserable peat,
made all the heat there was. The double row of berths lined the
walls. Outside, the rain and sleet fell dismally. Bert had a bowl of
prison soup before him, and a hunk of bread, black and heavy. He was
hungry, wet, tired, and dirty, but all he said was, "Lord! What _do_
they understand?"
* * *
Every day we devised new ways of avoiding going to work. "Nix arbide"
(no work) was our motto. The Russians, however, never joined us in
any of our plans, neither did they take any part in the fun. They
were poor, melancholy fellows, docile and broken in spirit, and the
guards were much harsher with them than with us, which was very
unjust, and we resented it.
We noticed, too, that among our own fellows those who would work were
made to work, while the "lion-tamer" and his husky followers lay in
bed unmolested. His latest excuse was that the doctor told him to lie
in bed a month--for he had a floating kidney. Of course the doctor
had not said anything of the kind, but he bluffed it out.
One morning when the guards were at their difficult task of making up
a working party, they reported that they were twenty-five men short.
Every one had been at roll-call the night before, the guards were on
duty, no one could have got away. Wild excitement reigned. Nobody
knew what had happened to them. After diligent searching they were
found--rolled up in their mattresses.
They were all quickly hauled forth and sent out to work. The mattress
trick had worked well until too many had done it, on this morning.
The morning was a troublesome time, and we all felt better when it
had passed; that is, if we had eluded or bluffed the guard. Bromley
and I had a pretty successful way of getting very busy when the
digging party was being made up. We would scrub the table or grab a
gadbroom and begin to sweep, and then the guards, thinking this work
had been given to us, would leave us alone!
As time went on, the Commandant became more and more worried. I think
he realized that he had a tough bunch to handle. If he had understood
English, he could have heard lots of interesting things about his
Kaiser and his country--particularly in the songs. The "lion-tamer"
and his three followers generally led the singing, sitting up in
their bunks and roaring out the words.
The singing usually broke out just after the guards had made an
unsuccessful attempt to pull the bedclothes off some of the boys who
had determined to stay in bed all day; and when the few docile ones
had departed for the peat bog, the "shut-ins" grew joyful to the
point of singing.
This was a hot favorite:
"O Germany, O Germany;
Your fate is sealed upon the sea.
Come out, you swine, and face our fleet;
We'll smash you into sausage-meat."
Another one had a distinctly Canadian flavor:
"Kaiser Bill, Kaiser Bill, you'd better be in hell, be in hell!
When Borden's beauties start to yell, start to yell,
We'll hang you high on Potsdam's palace wall--
You're a damned poor Kaiser after all."
They had another song telling how they hated to work for the Germans,
the refrain of which was "Nix arbide" (I won't work).
The Commandant came in one day to inspect the huts. The "bed-ridden"
ones were present in large numbers, sitting up enjoying life very
well for "invalids." The Commandant was in a terrible humor, and
cried out "Schweinstall"--which is to say "pig-pen"--at the sight of
the mattresses. He didn't like anything, and raged at the way the
fellows had left their beds. It might have seemed more reasonable, if
he had raged at the way some of them had not left their beds! The men
he was calling down were the gentle ones, those who were out working.
But to the "lion-tamer" and his followers, who were lazily lying in
their beds, laughing at him, he said never a word.
We knew enough about Germany and German methods to know this sort
of a camp could not last. Something was going to happen; either we
should all be moved, or there would be a new Commandant and a new set
of guards sent down. This Commandant had only handled Russians, I
think, and we were a new sort of Kriegsgefangenen (prisoners of war).
Bromley and I wanted to make our get-away before there was a change,
but we had no compass--my card had not been answered.
There was a man named Edwards, who was captured May 8th, a Princess
Pat, who once at Giessen showed me his compass and suggested that we
go together next time. He was at Vehnemoor, too, and Bromley and I,
in talking it over, decided to ask Edwards and his friend to join us.
Then the four of us got together and held many conferences. Edwards
had a watch and a compass; I had maps, and Edwards bought another
one. We talked over many plans, and to Edwards belongs the honor of
suggesting the plan which we did try.
The difficulties in the way of escaping were many. The camp-ground
was about three hundred feet long and seventy-five feet wide,
surrounded by a barbed-wire fence about ten feet high. The fence had
been built by putting strong, high posts in the ground and stretching
the wire on with a wire-stretcher, so that it could not be sprung
either up or down. The bottom wires were very close together. Inside
of this was an ordinary barbed-wire fence with four or five strands,
through which we were forbidden to go.
Outside the camp at the northwest corner was the hut where the guards
lived when not on duty, and beside this hut was the kennel where the
watch-dog was kept. He was a big dog, with a head like a husky! The
camp was lighted by great arc-lights about sixty feet apart. German
soldiers were stationed outside and all around the camp, and were
always on the alert.
We planned to go on Friday night, but an unforeseen event made that
impossible. A very dull German soldier had taken out about a dozen
Frenchmen to work on the moor. Two of them had slipped away some time
during the afternoon, and he did not notice he was short until he
got in. Then great excitement prevailed, and German soldiers were
sent out in pursuit. We watched them going out, dozens of them, and
decided this was a poor time to go abroad. The moon was nearly full
and the clouds which had filled the sky all day, were beginning to
break, all of which was against us.
On Saturday, just as we feared, an extra guard of about twenty-five
men was sent in from Oldenburg, and as the guard changed every two
hours, and this was about 5.30 o'clock in the evening when they came,
we reasoned that the double guard would go on at seven. After the
guard had been doubled, there would be but little chance for us.
It was now or never!